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"Sure, baby," I say. "I'll be right back."

"Me too," Mercy says. "Bring somethin' back for me too."

I leave the Eleanor wing and travel back the way we came, then go searchin' through Savannah's closet for somethin' comfortable.

As I'm choosing, Wyatt appears carryin' a large heavy tarp and punches the code into the elevator panel like disposin' bodies is just part of his job description.

He doesn't even acknowledge me. Just shoves that tarp into the elevator car and then he's gone.

I take the t-shirt and shorts with me and head into Mercy's bedroom. Then start searchin' through drawers. When I find something suitable for sleepin', I straighten up and come face to face with myself in a mirror.

This is when it hits me that my life is… different. That I am different. And there is no frame of reference for who I am in this moment.

What is happenin' right now?

It doesn't make much sense.

I'm sure that eventually, one day, I will be able to draw a straight line between then and now and it will all make sense. But like Savannah, who can't seem to come to terms with who she is in this moment, neither can I.

It'll have to wait.

I'm heading out of Mercy's bedroom when my phone buzzes a text.

It's Diesel. Ready when you are, it says.

Fuck. I forgot about that.

I reply back, leaving in 5 - see you there.

I go back into Eleanor's bedroom and find Mercy already asleep and Savannah in the shower. I lay the clothes out on the bed, then go into the bathroom and draw the sheeting back from the frame around the clawfoot tub.

Savannah is naked, and dripping, and gorgeous. The blood is gone and the angel is back. She smiles at me.

"I put your clothes on the bed. I gotta go, though. I've got something to take care of before mornin' and it can't wait."

That smile turns into a frown right quick. "What? No. You're not goin' nowhere. I need you here. This night needs to end with me in your arms."

I want that more than she will ever know.

But none of this is over yet. Won't be until mornin' and even that depends on what I do next. So I say, "I'll be back, I swear to you, I will. But I do need to go."

She wants to put her foot down. She wants to make demands.

But after all we've been through, she knows that if I say I need to do somethin', then it's got to be done.

So she steels herself with a press of her lips, and then nods. "You better. Because if anything happens to you, I will take up one of those swords on your body and wage my own war against God."

"He'll rue the fuckin' day," I say.

And she laughs. And that laugh gives me permission, so I leave.

CHAPTER 12

It's nearly two a.m. when the clubhouse comes into view.

There are no streetlights in rural Montana. Rural anywhere, actually. But out here in the badlands especially, the only lights you get are stars and that long gash in the sky they call the Milky Way, which looks more like a failed attempt to leave than anything meant for illumination.

So that, and the two old headlights of the Chevy, are all I got to navigate my way to the clubhouse.